1) had a job
2) had access to the internet
now trying learning anything for free online when you don't have money for food because you're jobless and don't have access to the internet because you don't have money for that either.
For (2) as I said: libraries are free, coffee shops are free. hotel lobbies are free, heck some whole areas have free Wi-Fi. Internet is very easy to find.
I'll be the first to admit I had a good education, caring and supportive family, and my story would be different and harder without them, but I can't imagine a world that I didn't try to learn something new each day.
Again though, people always try and compare the worst. The solution for someone without a living wage job is a society that doesn't allow that to happen and is a different argument IMO. Getting out of abject poverty is very different than getting out of poverty / being poor.
That said, for someone homeless and jobless, time IS their greatest resource, so learning can be a useful resort. Further no one said they had to do it on their own. The main premise here is that learning is better than hard work for increasing your station. I think that's true regardless of feasibility.
I don’t think you’re giving this enough weight. I went to a small unknown state college and got a degree in CS. The CS curriculum was horrible. My saving grace, was that I had been a hobbyist programmer since the mid 80s when my parents bought me my first computer. When I graduated in the mid 90s, I knew I wanted to get out of the small town I grew up in. My choices were to move to a slightly larger city and developing using technology that was already out of date, but would have provided me a salary to support myself, or moving to the major metro area where I still live not making nearly enough to support myself as a computer operator based on an internship that I had the previous year.
There was no way that I could have chosen that job if I my parents hadn’t already bought me a car, paid for insurance, paid my moving expenses, and help me pay my other bills for the first six months.
I “worked hard” but I didn’t have to work two jobs to support myself.
There was another guy who graduated with me, who was just as smart, but didn’t have parents that could help him. He had to get a job in the same place that I avoided like the plague. He’s still working there 20 some years later.